Hi everybody. I’ve just finished uploading ‘Max Havelaar’ by Multatuli, a Dutch novel written in 1860 as a protest against corrupt colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). It’s considered one of the most significant works in modern Dutch literature.
Here’s the link to the course:
I should add, that since the book was written in the nineteenth century, the spelling is slightly antiquated. Here are some of the differences:
-The modern diagraph ‘IJ’ is written as ‘Y’, e.g. ‘mogelyk’ and ‘myn’ rather than ‘mogelijk’ and ‘mijn’. This is by far the difference that pops up the most.
-‘-SCH’ sometimes appears at the end of words that are written with ‘-S’ today, e.g. ‘mensch’ rather than ‘mens’.
-Infinitives of separable verbs with ‘te’ are written as one word, e.g. ‘intenemen’ rather than ‘in te nemen’.
-‘Zoo’ rather than ‘zo’ and a few other differences concerning the transcription of vowel length.
The spelling might make it hard to make LingQs at times. If you’re using mijnwoordenboek.nl as your dictionary, for example, and you don’t get any results for, let’s say, ‘wyzen’, then just type in the modern spelling, ‘wijzen’, manually.
Moreover, the language itself is, of course, somewhat old-fashioned. One of the things you’ll notice is certain vestiges of the former case system (Dutch language - Wikipedia), such as ‘des Indischen Oceaans’ instead of ‘van de Indische Oceaan’.
I hope this contribution improves the quality of Dutch on LingQ somewhat! I quite enjoyed reading Max Havelaar, and I hope you do too!
